All-cause mortality rates - high vs. low animal protein diets
A major study was just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine from Harvard. In approximately 85,000 women who were followed for 26 years and 45,000 men who were followed for 20 years, researchers found that all-cause mortality rates were increased in both men and women who were eating a low-carbohydrate “Atkins” diet based on animal protein. However, all-cause mortality rates as well as cardiovascular mortality rates were decreased in those eating a plant-based diet low in animal protein and low in refined carbohydrates.
It is important to look at many actual measures of disease, including mortality, not just risk factors such as HDL cholesterol when considering a lifestyle change to a popular diet such as an Atkins diet. This is the first study that has examined mortality rates in those consuming an Atkins diet, and it confirms what many people have been mentioning, “a diet high in animal protein and fat, such as an Atkins diet, is not healthful and may shorten your lifespan.”
It is widely agreed that the American diet is too high in refined carbohydrates such as sugar, white flour and concentrated sweeteners, which promote a variety of chronic diseases. People often lose weight on an Atkins diet as they begin to restrict their intake of the high levels of refined carbohydrates many consume today. However, the answer is not to replace refined carbohydrates with animal protein such as beef, pork rinds, bacon and sausage, which Dr. Atkins claimed were good for your heart. It’s much more healthful to replace refined carbohydrates (“bad carbs”) with healthy carbs instead.
It’s not low-fat vs. low-carb. An optimal diet is high in healthy carbs such as fruits and vegetables and whole grains (including whole wheat, brown rice), legumes, soy products, nonfat dairy and egg whites in their natural forms and some good fats such as the omega 3 fatty acids found in fish oil and salmon. It’s low in unhealthy carbs such as sugar, white flour, white rice, white flour pasta and low in saturated fats and animal protein.
The message that many studies — including one in the Annals last month — have been giving the public and health professionals is that the Atkins diet is no worse for your heart than a plant-based diet, but all these studies examined only risk factors such as HDL, not measures of disease or mortality. That’s why this new study is so important.
A recent study reviewed in The New England Journal of Medicine found that an Atkins-type diet “promotes atherosclerosis (heart disease) through mechanisms that do not modify the classic cardiovascular risk factors” such as HDL. Other studies also showed this.
Your body makes HDL to remove excessive cholesterol from your body. Eating a stick of butter will raise HDL, but butter is not good for your heart. Pfizer discontinued a study of its drug, torcetrapib, which raised HDL but actually increased risk of heart attacks.
Conversely, a whole foods plant-based diet that’s also low in refined carbohydrates may reverse coronary heart disease and beneficially affect the progression of prostate cancer and even improve gene expression despite reductions in HDL.
Finally, what’s good for you is also good for our planet. Livestock consumption causes more global warming than all forms of transportation combined. It takes 10 times more energy to produce animal-based protein than plant-based protein.
It’s not all or nothing. You have a spectrum of choices. What matters most is your overall way of eating and living. If you indulge yourself one day, eat healthier the next. To the degree that you move in a whole foods, plant-based direction, the better you’re likely to feel and the healthier you’re likely to become.
